Mike White produced and appears in Gentlemen Broncos, the new film from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. He’s also worked on a large roster of beloved comedies, from Freaks & Geeks to School of Rock.

What can screenwriting teach you about dating?
I tend to write in the arena of awkward scenarios and awkward conversations. Dating is often the perfect inspiration. As a writer, you just have to find the absurdity in the awkwardness of dating, enjoy the absurdity, and not think of it in the humiliating ways that you could.

I’m a screenwriter and I’ve started dating another screenwriter — how can we avoid competition in our relationship?
It’s tricky. All relationships in the business, even when people aren’t doing the exact same thing… there’s so much rejection in Hollywood, and there are so many ups and downs, that it’s a lot more of a rollercoaster than a lot of careers. It’s hard not to see yourself comparatively to the success or failure of others, and in relationships, obviously it’s best when you have good self-esteem, like you aren’t so buffeted by the vicissitudes of fortune. But you know, people who aren’t affected by that are few and far between. I guess my advice is to find someone to have a relationship with outside of the business.

A lot of your projects focus on teenagers. Everybody says teenagers know nothing about dating, but is there anything about relationships that people could actually learn from teenagers?
Maybe teenagers are more savvy then we were back in the day. A lot of it has to do with the internet and the ways you can find like-minded people. Before, you were much more isolated, and I think that’s something adults can learn from teenagers. Adults can get unimaginative about their approach to meeting people.

Another common subject of yours is outsiders. Do outsiders have an advantage in relationships when they grow up?
I think the earlier you realize that the conventions of relationships, the conventions of life, don’t pertain to you, the freer you are to make decisions based on your own happiness and your own criteria. That’s a real gift of being an outsider. If you grow up a little bit outside of the norm, you’re just free of normative thinking. The most unhappy people I know are people who made choices based on some kind of conventional wisdom as opposed what was right for them specifically.

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